Six Mad Kings
by DarkBeta
Summary: Modern AU, mixed with The Sentinel. "Six mad kings and you, locked in a room; that's a sestina."
1. Josiah

Six Mad Kings, Chapter 1. by DarkBeta

"Six mad kings and you, locked in a cell -- that's a sestina." Sestina Sestina by Adam Lefevre

(The Seven are Magnificent but not mine. Also not mine is Mog's fanfiction universe with the Seven as ATF agents in modern Denver. I have used a vague version of this, without permission or authenticity.)

The motif was familiar, Josiah thought. The victorious king and his soldiers, striding rampant in an Egyptian frieze or a Babylonian bas-relief, painted on the walls of a Roman monument or an Aztec temple. And beneath their tread captives, naked and bound, meant for slavery or sacrifice.

Driscoll Smith had provided himself with the attributes of modern royalty: a silk suit and Italian shoes, gold rings on manicured hands, designer sunglasses and deftly layered hair. Semiautomatics made his guards the equivalent of an army. For wretched, huddled, hopeless captives, he had Josiah and his brethren.

Five of his brothers, anyhow. Driscoll had gloated over how easy they were to take.

Chris Larabee, carjacked Friday evening as he left the office. Vin Tanner, snatched Saturday morning from the dark streets of Purgatorio as he ran. Buck Wilmington and J.D. Dunne, forced at gunpoint into a nondescript van Saturday afternoon, as they came out of the market a few blocks from their apartment. Nathan, kidnapped at midnight from the badly lit hospital parking lot as he started home from a training shift. Josiah himself, clubbed and grabbed Sunday morning after serving breakfast at the shelter.

"In the midst of life, we are in death."

Once again safety was proved to be an illusion. Like the others he had been stripped to underclothes, cuffed hand and foot, and chained to a stanchion set in the concrete floor.

Behind the boasting Smith stood a sleek quiet man. Josiah had been refining Driscoll Smith's profile for eight months. The dealer had the rage for this scenario, but not the subtlety. He had to have hired the expertise he needed.

The stranger filled a syringe from a vial stored in a vacuum flask. Josiah lay still as he approached, and then tried in a sudden convulsion to head-butt him. The man only stepped back, until Smith's guards had subdued their prisoner again. He crouched down to swab a patch of skin. Josiah smelt disinfectant. The technician injected a faintly brown fluid.

"You'll feel it soon. Brainwashing in a bottle," Driscoll Smith gloated. "Tell him, Brace."

"Courage. God has not forsaken you," the quiet man whispered, and stood up.

"The formula attacks the sensory filters in the brain," he lectured dryly. "In half an hour you'll see and hear like a twenty-year-old again. In four hours you'll be vomiting at the stench of your own body. In eight hours you'll be deafened by the sound of a heart beating."

"You'll do anything to make it stop. Anything I tell you," Driscoll interrupted.

He turned to face Chris.

"I'll watch him take you. No, the boy first, in front of you. And then use that strength of his to beat one of the others. Maybe his medical friend? You'll finish him off, though. Just like the rest."

God was absent here, no matter what the stranger said. Josiah found that he could still be surprised by human evil. Driscoll Smith put on a ruminative expression.

"What's left? You're going to use the welder's torch on your old friend, shovel a grave for the new one, and all you'll need are boots for the kid."

Already Josiah's hearing seemed more acute. He heard JD's breath catch, and Buck's quiet order not to listen to the bastard. Chris didn't react. He watched Smith and the guards with an unblinking predator's gaze, just as he had since Josiah's arrival. He hadn't spoken once. Maybe he couldn't.

"Once the black's gutted, what do you want to do with the old freak?"

Brace leaned forward and whispered. Smith giggled. He'd been indulging in his own product. Not a good idea. Soon one of his competitors would take him out. Josiah tried to find some comfort in that.

"Get out the tool kit for some home improvement. Hammer . . . and nails . . . and the saw . . . ."

Another guard entered the echoing cellar. Smith looked at him eagerly.

"We haven't found the agent yet, sir. Though it won't be too long now. Even if he doesn't go home, he'll show up at the office."

"Can't find him . . . !"

Smith raised his fist. The guard flinched. The sleek blond, Brace, whispered some more. Smith brought his hand back down and looked at it as if it had surprised him. Then he giggled again.

"Oh, well. Can't start the party until all the guests arrive."

He ambled toward the exit. His cohort followed. Brace was the last one out of the room. He hit a switch by the door. Overhead the flickering fluorescent light went off. Josiah blinked at the darkness.

"Thank God," Buck said. "See, kid? You can open your eyes now. I told you things was going to get better."

"Hurts, Buck. It really hurts."

"I know. I know, JD. Just hang in there. You let old Buck worry about getting out of this."

"Okay . . . ."

"Nathan?" Josiah asked.

"The drug's progress is predictable, aside from an allowance for body weight."

"S'why the kid's worse off than me," Buck interpolated.

"You'll notice an increased acuity of hearing first. It heightens the startle reflex for a while. Seems like everything's too loud and too sudden." the EMT reported. "Eyesight will follow, culminating in severe photophobia within about three hours. Increased tactile sensitivity . . . ."

"Too bad Ezra ain't here," JD whispered. "Think I could finally beat him at cards."

"Don't wish him here. Wish him . . . anywhere else," Vin managed.

His voice was slow and childlike.

"Last thing we need is that Southern bastard hanging around to make a fuss," Nathan said gruffly.

A grunt and a heavy thud of impact echoed through the cellar. Josiah jerked against his cuffs.

"What . . . ?"

"Don't know what you think you're doing, Chris . . . ." Buck started.

The sound repeated, and then once again. The third time Josiah heard a muffled snap, and then silence.

"Ah, hell, Chris . . . !"

Nathan pulled at his cuffs. Josiah heard them rattle.

"Vin. Vin, tell Chris to wake up."

A long moment passed before the sharpshooter answered.

"Do I have to? He ain't hurtin' right now."

"He stopped breathing!"

Slowly Vin rolled his head to the other side. Josiah caught a hint of the motion. His eyes were adapting to the dark . . . or responding to that devil's brew.

"Guess you wouldn't want to leave the shindig first, cowboy. Ya gonna come back to us this time?"

Josiah heard a gasp of renewed breath. Was it really so loud?

"After the first eight hours . . . ."

"Hurts," JD said again.

Nathan swallowed.

". . . the pain is more or less continuous. Abrupt changes in the exterior sensory environment may bring about fugue states . . . ."

"For a little bit . . . ya only feel one thing. Or see, or hear it," Vin breathed. "Kind of a relief."

"Or else everything hits you at once," Buck said. "Goes through your head like a buzzsaw."

"That Brace, he told me . . . whispered, like . . . told me there was some kind of antidote . . . ."

Nathan's words should have been barely audible. Vin's were even quieter.

"Less . . . Let's not talk. For a bit."

So far Josiah felt only an unrelenting alertness. The stench of blood and fear, the grit on the unswept floor, and the dragging cold of the unheated building; they were impossible to forget or ignore. He wasn't even sure if that came from the drug, or from his own awareness of death.

He did not trouble the Lord with prayers for freedom or survival, or even for deserved judgment on the men who did this thing. What would he care if this body still breathed, once will and conscience were gone? Once the drug was injected he was already dead. Destroyed, alongside men he would have died to save.

Driscoll Smith had sent hunters after a seventh man. What if Ezra Standish was bound as they were, watching as the other six went before him into madness? Any of them would be hurt beyond enduring to see six friends destroyed. But Standish valued nothing about himself but his mind and his judgment.

Josiah could hope for the survival of his soul, all their souls. Perhaps even a reunion. Standish would see only their entire destruction. And at the end he would face it alone.

For that reason Josiah's only prayer was that Standish would be difficult, unpredictable and unfathomable one last crucial time. Let the armies of the conqueror lack a trophy.


	2. Ezra

Six Mad Kings, Chapter 2. by DarkBeta

The other six men were astonishingly predictable. Ezra was reassured that he knew where each of them was likely to be, while they had no idea of his own habits. If evading them ever became necessary, he thought his chances were good.

Of course he was not worried when Mr. Wilmington and Mr. Dunne failed to pass by the coffee shop where he had stopped for an espresso Saturday afternoon. He was only disconcerted. The break in the pattern had to be researched, that was all. Information was never wasted.

He found no sign of Tanner or Larabee in their accustomed routine. The likeliest explanation was that all four of them had engaged in some laborious or uncivilized endeavor, for which his disinterest would be evident. Some portion of the perpetual labor that seemed requisite to Larabee's possession of real estate, for example. Mending fences (an activity for which he was remarkably ill-suited), or mucking out the barn. 'Muck.' Even the verbal stem was inherently loathsome.

Jackson was still accessible though, and Sanchez, and they would have been invited participants in such activities.

He had other plans for the afternoon and the evening. Contacts to be made, and cover identities to be maintained. Yet the discrepancy preyed on his mind so he called the good healer at an hour Nathan would consider early (though for Ezra it was late). He was not surprised when Rain picked up the phone. She yawned.

"Nathan, you're supposed to call when you have to stay this long at the hospital."

Ezra closed the telephone connection gently.

He did not indulge in "bad feelings" like the team's sharpshooter. He did not watch for the flight of omens, like the profiler. His gift was to see patterns, in cards and events.

Five-sevenths of the team to which he was currently attached were in the hands of a sly enemy. He stroked his lip, considering options.

They could be dead. Yet the level of skill and planning argued for something more than simple assassination.

He had not been followed during his night's activities. He would have discovered a tail, having reason to fear and to ward against such an eventuality. His current location was unknown to their enemy, and would remain so until he returned to a predictable locale.

Was Mr. Sanchez also still at liberty? Or had he been rapt away like Jackson in the night? Ezra went to find out.

He did not enjoy the sacrifices he made for veracity. The persona he borrowed was beneath his sartorial and hygienic standards. He shuffled past Mr. Sanchez, receiving from him a loathsome mound of steaming oatmeal and good wishes in his supposed endeavors, but no second glance. Nor was he spotted by the shadows of whom Mr. Sanchez was unaware.

If Josiah was already taken, Ezra had meant to return to his condo. His own kidnapping would provide an opportunity to recover the others. He'd leave a message to apprise Judge Travis of the situation. Action might be taken on his word.

Since Mr. Sanchez continued his accustomed activities, Ezra had a decision to make. He did not touch his lip as he thought. That was a gesture that belonged to another person, another role.

He could warn Josiah with a whisper or a folded note. Further abductions would be thwarted. Travis would listen to Mr. Sanchez, and activate all the machineries of law enforcement. They might -- might -- be able to trace the other five. Eventually.

Or he could allow Josiah to be taken. Gamble that he could follow the kidnappers, that Mr. Sanchez would be brought to the same place as the others, that the older man would suffer no irrecoverable damage, that Ezra himself could remain undetected until he was able to summon assistance.

Ezra knew himself to be a cold man. He watched the kidnapping. He did not allow himself to react by so much as a frown to blows given or resistance broken, or to the unexpected fragility of unconsciousness. He could not afford to be distracted. The ante was too high.

Following the dark SUV, a small part of his mind considered contingencies.

Suppose he failed to track the kidnappers and Josiah? Suppose he aroused suspicion among their assailants, and his return to an identifiable routine was unmolested? Suppose his actions meant the team was lost?

He would explain the whole to Travis. Team 7 was well-respected, but he might survive the resentment of their peers. Only when he could offer nothing more to the hunt for the lost agents, or their enemy, would he be free to depart.

Maude would not worry if she didn't hear from him. She would suppose him adventuring like herself. She would never tire of the continual exhilarating stretch for the brass ring.

He had been a reluctant pupil, but he'd learnt from the most feral of their band how to vanish into empty places. He would not need to fear that the baggage he meant to abandon would become an offense to anyone remaining.

The old slang phrase for dice was most suitable. Bones, rolled on the ground. Accepting Mr. Larabee's invitation to join the team had been a gamble. He disliked gambling. It allowed for loss.


	3. Chris

Six Mad Kings, Chapter 3. by DarkBeta

He balanced on a ridge like a knife edge, between a bright chasm and a dark one. The bright one was pain, everything he felt tearing at him like brambles. The dark one was oblivion, absence drowning him like velvet.

Voices had become too complex for comprehension, too full of tones and shading. Even the words in his own head were lost in the flood of sound and scent and taste and touch and blinding light, as if he tried to solve equations while church bells rang over his head.

He was rage and murder. That searing black calm was the hurricane's eye, the center keeping him whole.

The man who spoke fear would die first. That mouth dropped sounds as heavy as stones. The one who raged could smell fear rippling from others tied like he was. He did not understand stones but the fear was his, because the men were his. They were him.

After the fear-thrower, he would kill the men who smelled of guns and pride. After them, everyone. Every stranger.

The stone-thrower went away, with the gunmen and the whipstroke light, to a kettledrum of footsteps and cymbal clash of door. The world turned calmer. The light was dim enough to see by and the whispers still enough to hear.

Rage and murder planned. He set his hands crossways of the iron and fell back on them, once. And once again, and once after that, until bones broke.

The bright chasm howled for him. He clung to the ridge between chasms, and the men tied as he was handed him stones, square mortared stones to build a rampart. He pleated his hand through the ring of metal, unlaced its chain and twisted at the chains until they broke, and the chasm couldn't pull him in. He/they were beginning to be free.

Light blared in the corridor outside their prison. The drums returned, with castanets of key and lock. His other selves feared. The one who raged was loosed to kill. He ran forward, bare feet silent.

The new guard stared as if he was blind, groping along the wall for triggers to the light. He stank of guns and fear. At the last moment he started to turn. The forearm across his throat cracked him smartly against the wall, but left the larynx uncrushed.

One hand still whole and strong. Easy enough to reach past the pinioning arm and close on that pale smooth throat. The cozy warmth of flesh. The pulse like a string of beads drawn under his hand.

The forgotten luxury of knowing what he felt was separate from what he was. He tasted the air, but the air was not himself. He heard the walls, but the concrete was not his flesh. The chasms waited, but the path between them was broad. The five men whose fear he felt were his, but they were not himself. He was Chris Larabee.

Narrow strong fingers tore at his grip. Chris had broken bones in one hand already. More of Driscoll Smith's amusements, he supposed. He needed to keep one hand whole though, if he was going to get his men out of here.

He yanked forward, dragging the slighter man off-balance, and then pushed him down. Automatically the other man put his hands out to catch himself. Chris dropped onto him, a knee across his shoulders pinning him down and driving the breath from his lungs. Easy enough then, even one-handed, to collect both wrists and hold the man pinned.

"Where are they?"

The words were a painful wheeze.

"Ezra?" Josiah called in astonishment.

Ezra Standish. The gambler. Their agent in the shadows, lying to liars and cheating the faithless. One of his team.

All unimportant. What he was, was hope.

Somehow in Ezra's presence, the universe snapped back into shape. It was an unpleasant shape but better than the state Smith's drug created, where every instant sound and light and flavor changed unpredictably.

The man's coat and shirt smelt of a stranger's sweat, along with the familiar stink of dirt and vomit and cheap alcohol. That wasn't the right smell.

Chris fixed his hand in both collars and dragged them down, not troubling with buttons. He laid his head on Ezra's naked back and heard his heart. The alien scent dissipated. This smelt right. Sounded right. Felt right.

"Mine." Chris said.

The tang of fear peaked, like a mouthful of vinegar. The heartbeat he shouldn't be able to hear accelerated.

"Don't fight him, Ezra!"

Nathan's voice. The healer. But there was no comfort in it. With reek and crash and fire, the universe was waiting to move into him.


	4. Nathan

Six Mad Kings, Chapter 4. by DarkBeta

Fear had a smell. Of course it did. But this reek, this soup of despair had to be the drug's illusion. Just like the five drumlike echoes of his own heart that seemed to vary in rhythm. To hear the heartbeats of the rest of Team 7 was physically impossible. Therefore Nathan was not hearing one rhythm slow and stutter.

Yet he seemed able to match the heartsongs to his team-mates.

Close to him the slight irregularities of age overlaid a strong clear rhythm (at least Josiah paid some attention to a healthy diet, alcohol aside), with the stressed acceleration due to anger instead of fear. On his other side a double rhythm, the sinus rates tending toward a common average as the young man calmed and the older man worried. Buck had no right to such health, with the food he ate and only one form of regular exercise. Beyond them another, birdlike in its swiftness -- and Nathan was helpless if Vin had another of his idiosyncratic drug reactions now.

So he did not hear them. And he had not heard the sudden alteration as Chris crashed that last time against the cuffs that held him. The rhythm dropping from urgent to lackadaisical. Breath now, breath a man might be able to pick out when they were held in close quarters. Breath was not impossible. And he could hear one, and two and three, and a swift shallow panting from the fourth . . . . No smoker's rasp. None.

"Vin. Vin, tell Chris to wake up."

"Do I have to? He ain't hurtin' right now."

That long pause before the reply spoke of depressed consciousness. How soon before Vin followed Larabee into a disassociative state? How many hours for each of them to reach the same level?

"He stopped breathing!"

Of course Vin responded to Chris's need, or Chris to Vin's. This time words were enough to reach the leader who was straying ahead of them. No guarantee for the next time.

Josiah deserved to know what to expect. Nathan explained, holding to the trained calm of the emergency room.

He had nothing more to say. Nothing to hear, since he knew the heartsongs were a delusion. Just gasps and metallic shrieks as Chris continued to fight the cuffs that held him. And breathing. Five others and himself, breathing in the fading dark.

This once his color made no difference at all. Not to his team-mates, with Standish absent. (The Southerner was too polite or careful to say anything, but Nathan could feel the distance between them.) And not, aside from the usual slurs, to their captors. His death had no more dread than the others.

Vin, buried alive. Buck, burning like Larabee's wife and son. Would he hear the heartsongs stop? Smith was a monster.

Brace implied there was some treatment for the drug's effects. Depressants would counter some part of the nervous hyperactivity. Perhaps some of the new psychotropic treatments. Not an area he'd researched, but Josiah might have some ideas.

Footsteps. Slow, careful footsteps, after the reverberation of chains abandoned on the floor. Josiah's thoughtful voice.

"How did our brother loose his bonds?"

"Broke his hand and pulled it through the cuff." Buck said. "Didn't you hear the bones go?"

Nathan pulled at his own cuffs futilely. He needed to immobilize that hand. The phalanges were tricky to set. Larrabee could suffer a permanent impairment of his dexterity. Bad enough in the left hand, since he shot with both, but damage to the right would end his law enforcement career.

The door opened, that Driscoll Smith and his thugs had gone out of. Looked like the gang had floodlights set up in the corridor for some reason. The glare was far too bright for ordinary fluorescents. Nathan couldn't see any details of the black silhouette, but posture suggested the man was armed. Larabee's future might not be a concern.

Chris stalked the gunman like a great cat. Nathan held his breath. The gunman groped at the wall as if he couldn't see, in spite of the flood of light. He had to be drunk or drugged, ignoring Larabee's approach like that.

Nathan expected the quick attack to be deadly. Had Chris actually pulled his blow? He put the man down instead.

"Where are they?"

Simple words. Weighted with more emotion than short words should hold. Nathan shook his head in disbelief. That wasn't Ezra. It couldn't be.

The heartsongs sang in sevenfold harmony.


	5. Ezra II

Six Mad Kings, Chapter 5 by DarkBeta

He had watched Failure dealt, and lesser cards of Death and Rape. But the card faces blurred when he knew the man who held him was Larabee. Now he could not read their value.

"Don't fight him, Ezra! The sociopath drugged Chris first. The effects are cumulative over time, and he hasn't been rational for several hours."

Mr. Jackson's voice, the EMT's dispassionate assessment. And Tanner's rasp was barely audible.

"Chris isn't . . . he's in a bad place."

As if in illustration, Larabee's grip went slack. Ezra risked a countermove that would have gotten his neck broken a few seconds before, but his boss rolled aside, clutching his head. Ezra sat up.

"Josiah?"

"They poisoned all of us. Don't risk too much getting us out. We need you to see he pays."

"Driscoll Smith. Make sure he goes down hard."

Buck's voice, hard with hate.

"Ez, don't let 'em. Don't let 'em," JD murmured.

Failure? The suicide-king leered. He flicked it from view. There would be a cure, or treatments. Priority must be given to removing the team to a less perilous position. Chris needed Nathan's care as soon as possible. Ezra reached for the selection of picks stitched (hastily) into the ragged coat.

"What is the manner of your restraint?"

Buck snorted.

"Can't you just ask if we're tied up, Ez? We got a couple sets of cuffs apiece."

"Along with sufficient rattling chains to supply several dozen ghosts," Josiah added.

"Well within my skills. Mr. Sanchez, if you would provide an aural beacon . . . ."

He found himself flat on the concrete again. This time an effort was made to prevent harm, an arm interposed behind his head at the moment of impact. Long before he could take advantage of that solicitude to escape, he was pinned by the heavier body across his.

Oddly, Ezra felt no immediate surge of fear. Chris Larabee was a source of almost universal intimidation. Ezra had suffered the stress of his regard before now, but this brute self seemed more endangered than dangerous. The hand that pawed at his current redolent garments was clumsy, the swollen fingers unable to grasp the cloth they groped at. A head dropped heavily onto his chest.

"We need to get these cuffs off. What are you doing over there?" Nathan scolded.

"I protest! Mr. Larabee's intervention is responsible for this unavoidable delay."

"Heard him tackle ya. What's the old war dog done now?"

"Were it not for the lack of certain physical concomitants, I would have reason to suspect a personal assault."

Of course Wilmington found that risible. Fortunately he was braying too hard to explain the grounds of his amusement to JD.

"Jes' lie still, Ezra," Vin said. "Chris needs you. Needs somebody . . . outside."

"Well, then, let one of you volunteer!"

"We aren't exactly at liberty, son," Josiah told him, but Vin was speaking too.

"We don't smell right. Not anymore. Maybe not ever. You're the only one as can do it."

"Do what?!"

"Chanu told me about people who could see and hear and taste and feel a whole lot more than normal."

"You knew about this drug before?"

"He said they were supposed to be guardians, but they needed a different kind of person like an anchor, so they know what to pay attention to. Think the stuff Brace gave us, we're sort of turned into the first kind of people."

What an astonishing fragment of superstition to emerge from the taciturn tracker! A sociologist would have a field day if he could persuade Vin into an interview.

The trouble was . . . Vin didn't make many mistakes. Certainly Ezra trusted his "bad feelings" over Josiah's crows.

"And Ezra is the second kind? He is Chris's anchor?"

Not to mention that Nathan's disagreement made any theory more palatable.

So, Larabee needed him now? What payment would be appropriate?

No, he would be expected to aid all the other six. Vin was uncommunicative so far on how to accomplish that, and Ezra was not about to ask for assistance. The instinct that took him through his undercover assignments would have to do.

"Your team needs you, Mr. Larabee. Are we going to assist them?"

"Standish? I don't remember getting drunk."

A rational verbal response. Ezra was vaguely aware of Nathan stating his disbelief, and Josiah praising the god he was intermittently faithful to.

As usual, Mr. Larabee required that his flatly stated words carry an excessive amount of freight. He confessed his condition. Requested reassurance. "Did I drink myself into a fugue? (Have I fallen back that far?)" Warned off his friends. "I may shoot you to put you out of my misery." Asked for a status report.

He also sat up. He kept a hand on Ezra's shoulder though. Ezra sat up too, careful not to move away. Larabee was enough like a cat to chase what fled.

"Hangover?"

"Everything hurts. It's too bright, too loud. Stinks."

He made a gagging sound, and swallowed. That seemed to confirm Vin's prognosis, however inarticulately. Concentrating on the symptoms seemed to exacerbate them.

"You filled your glass too full. Pour some back into the bottle."

"What?"

"Five glasses. Picture them in front of you. How full are the glasses?"

"Brim full," Larabee reported, just as if he really did see the glasses.

Ezra had expected a response along the lines of, "What sort of nonsense are you trying to pull, Standish?" This was . . . progress. Unexpected, but progress.

"The first glass is what you hear. Pour some out. Pour it out until my voice sounds normal to you."

"Then keep talking."

He felt the fingers on his shoulder twitch, as if Larabee mirrored a metaphorical action.

"Of the importunate requests you all make regularly, even daily, that has to be the most disconcerting. 'Shut up, Ez,' or 'why do you use a ten-dollar word for a dime's talk?,' is the level of respect my entirely necessary converse is generally given. Only the knowledge that chemical intervention was required to win this acknowledgement prevents me from suspecting some form of substitution . . . ."

"Got it," Larabee said. "Figures listening to you would taste like brandy. Come on. You're getting the others loose."


End file.
